Expert Baffled By Ferocity, Distance Of ‘Freakish’ Landslide

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SEATTLE — Richard Iverson may be one of the world’s foremost landslide experts, but if he had been driving along the Stillaguamish River March 22 when the slope across from Steelhead Drive began to crumble, he wouldn’t have fled to high ground.

He would have pulled over to snap pictures.

That’s because Iverson never dreamed a slide from such a modest bluff could travel as far and as fast as it did, sweeping across the river, burying an entire neighborhood and engulfing a swath of Highway 530 in a minute’s time.

“It was a freakish thing,” said Iverson, of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Cascades Volcano Observatory. “I’m not sure anybody would have anticipated a slope like that would liquefy the way it did.”

Using a new computer model, Iverson estimated that the mass of mud, rocks and trees was traveling about 60 mph when it slammed into the river.

Imagine standing on the side of a freeway when a semi-truck barrels past at 60 mph, Iverson said. Then imagine a battalion of eighteen-wheelers, half a mile wide, headed straight at you.

“It’s hard for me to imagine somebody being in the middle of that Steelhead neighborhood and having any chance of survival,” he said.

Snohomish County officials have reported 35 people dead and an additional 10 missing.

An eyewitness Iverson spoke with described the slide literally shoving the river out of its banks.

Iverson spent several days at the site last week and is compiling the first scientific report on what he believes will be a “profoundly important” event in the understanding of landslide hazards.

When the recovery effort is over, he and other scientists hope to study the slide in detail, trying to figure out why it so quickly liquefied and ran out for nearly a mile — more than three times the distance Iverson would have expected based on comparison with hundreds of other slides of similar heights.

“This bluff is only about 180 meters (about 600 feet) tall, which by Northwest standards is sort of small potatoes,” Iverson said.

The hope is that by understanding what caused the slide to morph into a monster, scientists will be able to better identify the most dangerous hazard zones in the future, said Jonathan Godt, a Denver-based USGS expert who also visited the Oso slide.

“It’s one of these tragic events that unfortunately provides an opportunity to increase awareness,” he said.